Hope Quotes VII

Hope is carefully to be distinguished, on the one hand from optimism (which springs from prediction of what the future will bring), and on the other hand from wishful thinking (which is unconstrained by the probabilities of what that future might bring). Hope is based neither on certainty, as if it were simply extrapolation of the present, nor on fantasy, as if its object bore only a tenuous relation to the present. Once again, we encounter the eschatological dialectic of continuity and discontinuity. In relation to hope, failure to respect this balance can lead either to despair that anything will ever change for the better, or to violent imaginings of apocalyptic destruction in which the future can be attained only by the annihilation of the past.

JOHN POLKINGHORNE

The God of Hope and the End of the World

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Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

VACLAV HAVEL

Disturbing the Peace

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What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

GEORGE ELIOT

Middlemarch

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If you have a dream, live it. If you have a hope, chase it.

EARL PFEIFFER

Clash by Night

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Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Work Without Hope

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Tags: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In somewhat the same way as reasonable belief is to be distinguished from superstition, so is reasonable hope ("hope that maketh not ashamed") to be distinguished from that which is vain and illusory. It is also true that in somewhat the same way as the strength of the belief furnishes a very effective evidence for the reasonableness of the belief to the man who holds it, so does the assurance of hoping give much additional testimony to the reasonableness of the hope for the mind that entertains it. In both cases, a certain value, which is something more than purely "subjective," cannot easily be denied to this support of truth in a form that is primarily emotional. It is more reasonable to believe what one can honestly believe with a strong feeling of confidence in its "objective" truthfulness. It is more reasonable to hope what one can honestly hope with a large measure of firm assurance. Nor is this measure of emotional evidence to be esteemed as of value to those only who store it in their own bosoms. Beliefs and hopes that are kept ever warm and vital in the bosom of humanity, by being near to its heart and source of vital life-currents, are lawfully as well as actually most well nourished and most vigorous.

GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD

What May I hope?

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Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.

ANNE LEMOTT

Bird by Bird

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The quality of our expectations determines the quality of our actions.

ANDRÉ GODIN

In Thought

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While there is life there is hope--and while there is hope there is life.

E. E. HOLMES

Joyful Through Hope

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The greatest architect and the one most needed is Hope.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

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Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them.

JEROME GROOPMAN

The Anatomy of Hope

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Hope--it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.

THE ARCHITECT

The Matrix Reloaded

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Hope is the only method of recapturing hope.

HIROKAZU MIYAZAKI

The Method of Hope

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Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.